Body Memory (song)
"Body Memory" is a song by Björk from her tenth studio album, Utopia. Background and Development "Body Memory" is written by Björk and Arca, and produced by both. The song is Utopia's ten-minute-long centerpiece, and was written as a response to Vulnicura’s ten-minute-long break-up song “Black Lake”. Because that song was more negative and depressing than anything Björk had ever written, she wanted this song to be more optimistic, a manifesto about “how she is going to live the second half of her life.”Geffen, Sasha (16 November 2017). "Björk Is Full of Love Again". Pitchfork. Each verse touches up on a different component in her life: verse 1 is rural, verse 2 is about destiny, verse 3 about love, verse 4 about sex, verse 5 is urban, and verse 6 about her custody battle with her ex-husband. Each verse shows her getting caught up in anxiety and uncertainty, but with each chorus she relaxes and trusts her instincts to get her through. On my previous album there was a song called ‘Black Lake’, which was at the bottom of a heartbreak. And I think something in my subconscious mind was thinking, if you’re going to write your saddest song ever, you’ve also got to write its optimistic sibling. I came home to my cabin here in Iceland and it was a bit chilly and I put on three coats, lay next to the lake, looked at the clouds and listened to an audio-book for four hours. It was The Tibetan Book of the Dead. A third of it is almost like a Catholic thing : if you haven’t been good in your life, when you die you will go into a tunnel and burn for a thousand years. That’s part of it – whipping yourself into being a good person while you live. And then one section, which is my favourite, is about a utopian life, and says if you are good, there will be twenty miles of lavender and lakes and peacocks. So ‘Body Memory’ ended up being me thinking: at the moment of death, what will I be thinking ? It’s about me teaching myself, and hopefully I can share some of that with people. In the verses, it’s about when your head plays games and you get neurotic and scared, and the chorus is when your body kicks in and you relax. It’s teaching you about trusting your body, whether that’s parenting, or being a lover, or destiny – all these big issues in life. We have it all encoded in our DNA, so if we relax into our body memory, we know how to do it naturally.Mixmag: Björk is constantly innovating (1 December 2017) The song’s instrumentation is comprised of flutes, strings, beats, and a 60-piece Icelandic choir called Hamrahlíðarkórinn arranged by Björk and conducted by Þórgerður Ingólfsdóttir. The song was debuted live on May 6, 2019 at Cornucopia's residency at The Shed in New York."Björk Concert Setlist at The Shed, New York on May 6, 2019". Setlist.fm It's performed with a circle flute, two eight-meter-long organ pipes made in Iceland that “make the audience around them rumble”, and a choir (the song’s Hamrahlíðarkórinn for the NY residency shows and European tour, and Staccato Choir for the Mexico residency shows). Björk discussed her intention to perform the song in an interview with Dazed:"Björk in conversation with Sufi mystic Llewelyn Vaughan-Lee". 21 November 2019. Dazed. Listening to one of Vaughan-Lee’s talks made me think of a song I tend to perform in May with an Icelandic choir called Hamrahlíðarkórinn. It is called “Body Memory” and is a little megalomaniac, about the big issues in life, destiny, love, maternal love, sexual love, death and such. There is one verse about each subject, when we are too much in our heads about them or what Einstein called “the optical illusion of the separateness” and then the choruses are celebratory: about the moment when we click into our bodies, get out of our heads and merge gracefully with each of the issues. Lyrics Reference Category:Songs Category:Utopia songs